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The number of indie games being released on Steam and consoles has sky-rocketed this last year. At the same time, the amount of money being spent on indie games doesn't really seem to increase. In other words: the average indie game is making much less money! SteamSpy recently released some graphs that show that while total sales for all games together are pretty stable, median sales per game have dropped enormously. You only need to open Steam's list of new releases to see why: so many new games launching every day! Five years ago only a couple of games launched on Steam per week. Now there are dozens launching daily , and they're all competing for the same players. The average income of a new indie game has dropped so far that some even call this current trend the 'indiepocalypse'. There are several reasons we're seeing this now. The most obvious reason is that marketplaces like Steam have made worldwide distribution easy. They have become more and more open...

Many people in the games industry think the word "indie" stands for "financially independent", and indeed this is something that a lot of indie game developers care about a lot. Although it is an important topic, I think we should care about it less: being indie should be about creative independence, not about financial independence. You might argue that one is impossible without the other: if someone is funding your game then of course that someone is also influencing your creative decisions. However, what a lot of people don't seem to realize is that no one funding your game is also a big influence on your creative freedom. You will need some way to get food and pay the rent if you want to spend a significant amount of time making your game the best you can. Disclaimer: this post is only targeted at those who want to make a living making games. If you are making games as a hobby in your spare time, then please ignore this post and do whatever you want! ^_^...

My game Proun was recently 'cloned' by an iOS game called Unpossible . Unpossible isn't the first 'clone' of Proun: games like Synesthetic and Polyrider also copy the core gameplay and many obstacle shapes. Polyrider even goes so far as to copy-paste my main marketing text (DOH!). However, the timing of Unpossible is much more painful as Proun itself is also finally coming to iOS (and Android and 3DS): together with Engine Software I am working on a bigger and better Proun+. Proun+ coming to iOS means that it will be a direct competitor of its alleged clone Unpossible. I saw quite a bit of controversy online about whether Unpossible is a clone or not and whether that would be bad or not, so here is my own take on the matter. I think most people are worrying way too much about most clones. The only clones that should be considered a big problem are direct rips that add nothing and are clearly only intended as a moneygrab. Most infamous clones are not of this typ...

Okay, maybe more like an indie marketing plan than the plan, since every game and every company comes with its own approach to marketing. Nevertheless, at Ronimo we have gathered a ton of experience with marketing through Awesomenauts and Swords & Soldiers , and I have also done quite a bit of marketing for my hobby project Proun . Today, I would like to share this knowledge in the form of a rather complete plan that other indies hopefully find useful to help guide their marketing. Traditionally marketing is the field of the large companies and the large budgets, who buy advertisement space on television, magazines and websites. However, today a small indie studio with hardly any marketing budget can still get a lot of attention going. In fact, I think indie studios can potentially market downloadable games better than big companies! When we launched Swords & Soldiers, we were a pretty much unknown company with no marketing budget, and yet we managed to get enough attention...

Last November my game Proun won a Dutch Game Award for Best Original Game Design. When I received the award, I grabbed the microphone and did a short speech, which Control Magazine then asked me to write that into a column. Which I did! The Dutch version is currently on their website and in the magazine, and here is the English translation. The Dutch games industry is doing really well. More developers than ever before! But still, if you look for truly special Dutch games, you will find painfully few. Testament to this is that at the last Dutch Game Awards, two student games and a hobby game were nominated for Best Original Game Design. Where are the companies? So many developers, so few people who create their own concepts. It's as if we have all become entrepeneurs, and left our passion and creativity at the door. I think this is because many Dutch developers are afraid to follow their heart. With all these talented people, there must be so many good ideas floating around! Yet ...